Indulged in a Wild Turkey Distillery tour on the last Kentucky road trip. A+, would do again.
It’s time for the third annual Travels in Pictures. Lots of pictures this time around, it was a fairly prolific year of shooting and this isn’t even scratching the surface…
February – Austin First stop, Austin. Flew in for the annual NAHBS show, shipping all of my lighting gear half way across the country and setting up for four solid days of shooting followed by some clutch Austin hanging out. Urban Velo NAHBS coverage. The red bike above made the cover of #25.
March – Seattle From Austin directly to Seattle. Just a couple of days, pretty awesome city and trip in the moment. Rented a car and visited FSA, Seattle Bike Supply (Redline/Torker) and Raleigh USA. Got some FSA coverage, and used an image from Raleigh for the #27 Ed Statement. Otherwise rode around, ate awesome food and had fancy drinks.
March – Portland Took the train from Seattle to Portland for a solo week staying with Dan of Portland Design Works and just riding around all day visiting everyone I could manage. Pretty amazing place, I’ve visited a couple of times and came incredibly close to moving there back in 2003. Even if on this side of the country it’s cool to hate on Portland, I could still see events taking me there. In order: Visited Cheever’s house, visited MAP Cycles, covered a visit to Queen Bee, got web coverage of a Ruckus Components visit, stopped through Vanilla Workshop, did a lot of hanging out at Portland Design Works and their in-house skate bowl, also did a lot of hanging with the Blaq Designs guys and their weirdo room of offensive screens, also got out to Ira Ryan’s garage space and had web coverage of a visit to Chris King. Used some Circulus images for a feature in Urban Velo #25. Did a Portland Frame Builder gallery in Urban Velo #25 too. For all the traveling I’ve done over the years this Austin/Seattle/Portland trip was the longest continuous amount time I’ve ever been out of Pittsburgh—15 days.
May – Louisville Went to Louisville for the Derby Debauchery Polo Fun Time Tournament and played with a couple of natives as I traveled solo, on a longer roadtrip than just this weekend. Good times for sure. Posted a web gallery at Urban Velo.
May – Nashville Drove from Louisville to Nashville to visit some great friends in a relatively sucky city. Big hats, big boots, big bugs. Middle of a cicada bloom in fact, which was kind of cool. Posted a web gallery from the Nashville Bicycle Lounge visit—it was good to see old friend Dan in his native habitat. It was weird to have some guy in traffic stop and recognize me walking down the street, but I guess that happens sometimes even far from home.
May – Allegheny National Forest Bike camping. Totally amazing, favorite camping trip so far. I posted a ton of images and full write up.
June – Philadelphia Road trip to Philadelphia for ESPI. We played pretty well, both of our losses were by one goal. A flukey one, and 5-4 overtime. Good trip, good polo, one of the better run tournaments I’ve witnessed. Another picture or two here.
July – Boston I visited Boston for the first time last year and laid the ground work for a way-cool 2011 as far as fancy bikes are concerned. Nearly a year in the making I went to Boston for a week long framebuilding course with Ant Bike Mike, and wrote a feature in Urban Velo #29 about it. Mind blowing week for me, and I came out of it with a remarkable touring bike. Loved it. Spent an extra day or two in Boston and visited Firefly Bikes and wrote up their anodizing process and then hit Geekhouse, bringing my NAHBS 2011 polo bike back and got a web gallery out of it. Also stopped through Parlee for a tour, but understandably couldn’t shoot the really cool stuff.
July – New Hampshire Made a quick visit to New Hampshire to see the new Indy Fab and Bailey Works factory. Stayed with owner Gary Smith for a night, always a good idea to take every opportunity to listen to whatever successful people will tell you. Great family going on there. Posted a tour of the new factory, and also posted some shots of some awesome Mother/Daughter IF bikes.
July – NYC My nearly annual trip to NYC to hang with good friends that I also managed not to take a picture of. Spent an afternoon brown bagging Modelo on the beach at Coney Island. I love NYC. Played some smoking hot polo, hung out with friends, took it pretty easy.
August – Rochester Road trip to Rochester for another fun-time tournament. Great time with great hosts. Roof partying, parking lot playing. Ended up with two folks I didn’t play so well with, but we had fun anyway. Posted a gallery of bikes, and a gallery of my teammate (and owner/builder) Horse Cycles custom polo bike.
September – Interbike Interbike #9 for me. In case you were wondering, Vegas still sucks. Had a good Interbike though. Posted lots of stuff at Urban Velo.
September – Columbus Another road trip to a local tournament. Had a good time, even if we were eliminated half way through the first day because the rules changed because someone had to drive home or something. Bullshit, but made the best of things. Still like the Columbus crew.
October – DC Polo Camp For the second year in a row I rode from Pittsburgh to Frederick MD for DC Polo Camp. Rode the new ANT touring bike from the July framebuilding course. This year I convinced another to come along with. Assuming it happens next year, I’m hoping to get a bigger crew together. Great time. Shot lots of pictures, posted a day by day gallery.
November – Philadelphia Second trip this year, stayed in the same awesome house with the same awesome little dog. Played hard in the inaugural PA State Polo Championships, got third place. “CLEAN!” Posted a big gallery of images.
Lots of travel this year—the goal was to spend roughly two months out of town and I more or less did just that, spending a total of 53 nights on the road. Met lots of great people, had some really amazing experiences with new and old friends. The year was great in most respects, significantly shitty in others. We’ll give it a B- overall. Lots of shooting, lots of writing, lots or riding. Here’s to a better 2012.
One week plus a day, Jan 15-23. Some from St. Louis, some from Pittsburgh, all from the same roll through a Holga 135.
January – London for a week alone. Visted Brompton Bicycles, Condor Cycles, Tour de Ville and a Rollapaluza event. And got so lost within hours of landing that I had to stop some mohawked cyclist and ask for him to, “point me back towards London, please.” Pretty great trip all around, lots of time to myself to explore and think, and got to hang with pictured UV contributor Julian Birch. Had to convince the hotel powers that be that yes, I could have two bikes in my 10×10 room against their policies. I hope to return someday, it was a lovely city with a staggering amount of history for a new world native like myself.
February – Indianapolis for the North American Handmade Bicycle Show. Besides the magazine work, I handle the “official” show photography and managed to shoot at least one bicycle from and a portrait of each and every builder in attendance. Cool trip even if I spent a bit more time than I had wished in front of my computer processing and uploading images.
April – Cleveland polo tournament. Basically the beginning of the spring/summer season, I cut my hair just before leaving and managed to get a hell of a sunburn on the top of my head. That sucked, but spending the day playing polo and heckling with friends more than made up for it.
May – Dayton for the Midwest Polo Champeenships. Best showing we’ve had a tourny, got to camp in my buddy Elton’s (w/ the dreads) back yard with a bunch of other folks. Killer time with new friends I plan on visiting just a week or two into 2010 as a few of us head to St. Louis for more polopolopolo.
June – Chicago for a totally unstructured visit. Took the Amtrak, crashed with Coyote (pictured w/ cake), got to ride all over Chicago and visit tons of people and places in my few days there. Can’t wait to return, it’s a quick train ride from home.
June – Minneapolis, continuing my Amtrak ride from Chicago. I may have officially been there for a Globe press-launch but managed to visit with loads of old and new friends and rode my bike here, there and everywhere. Even took my gracious host’s (BRose, pictured) killer townie bike for an unplanned, unauthorized ride across town when I was running late for a meeting and my bike was already packed up. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, eh?
September – Philadelphia for the inaugural World Championships of Hardcourt Bike Polo. The tournament itself was questionable, but the game play and players themselves certainly were not. Witnessed some incredible play, stayed with some awesome courier friends of friends, played some shit polo and had fun anyway.
September – Bay Area, Oakland and San Francisco. Holy hell, I love the Bay Area. Every one of my visits there has been more magical than the last, with this one being particularly hard to leave behind. If there is anywhere I would live besides Pittsburgh, this would be it. I’m blessed with amazing friends in amazing places, in this case the Montano’s (Pops and Jason, pictured) that put me up in their family home and simply couldn’t be nicer people. Jason didn’t even care when I told him I took his pictured loaner DeRosa track bike on some singletrack, bombing through the redwoods above Oakland. Again, forgiveness is many times better than permission.
September – Las Vegas sucks, but Jeff and I cleaned up and hit the Interbike show floor for three days of breakneck business. By lunch of the third day we needed bourbon in our soda.
October – New York City for Los Marcos Melee polo tournament. Once again, amazing friends put us up for the weekend and we played and partied hard for three days. Just an awesome fall weekend in the busiest city on earth.
2009 was a good year not only for travel but a number of other things in my life, and is closing on a rather amazing and unexpected note. Here’s to 2010 being that much better, with more travel and more time with my incredibly awesome friends and family.
This is Carrie and Matt.
And they’re getting married!
Great friends that I’m selfishly bummed are moving to St Louis next month, even if it is for all the right reasons. I can’t wait to visit.
I carried my camera for 80 miles and camped this weekend but the only picture I took worth sharing is of Tim and his breakfast hoagie that he had stashed.
File this under people and places I didn’t expect to find myself. Euro-Karaoke, London with Fish from Condor Cycles (left) and Keith from Tour de Ville (right).
D700, 28mm, f2.8, 1/25 or so, ISO:25600
Mainly a bike-biz trip, but I’ve managed to see some touristy sights as well.
D700, 28mm, f2.8, 1/50 or so, ISO:6400
Assorted images from the past month or so. In order from the top: Chris Y playing polo in Pittsburgh; two shots from a Chub Hub shoot for upcoming review; two images from the Sprout Fund’s Hothouse ’08; my beat up Kryptonite mini u-lock; The 50′s High Teens from Japan at Howler’s; Tucker of Chicago and his fancy camera; The Handlebar Restaurant/Bar in Chicago.
Caught this at 2am from my attic window.
Shot handheld at 200mm, f2.8, 1/60s, ISO 12800. No VR. Lovin’ the D700.
Seldom seen view of the 40th St Bridge, from the banks of the Allegheny in Lawrenceville. Bonfire, beers and a 6am ride home made it a good night.
Mid-week camping on the Yough River Trail at Cedar Creek. Pizza in the oven, abandoned space along the way